Language Faculty

Subject: English

Assessment
Writer’s Effect

Second Term Teacher: Sheena Hardaker

Isabella Torres Oviedo 04/05/2020 9B

Goal 1: Locate the section of the passage that the task or question refers to; select the
relevant or appropriate words, phrases or language features, and explain or analyse the
effect of these choices using your own words; write clearly and look for connections
between the writer’s words and your own related ideas.

Read Text A, and then answer Questions 1 (a)–(d).

Text A: The Gift

This text is taken from a longer narrative. At this point in the story, it is the night of Natalia’s
sixteenth birthday. Her grandfather, a doctor, has arrived back late at night from visiting
patients. He has woken Natalia and asked her to follow him quietly through the streets of their
city.

We were nearing the end of our side street and I assumed the silence of our walk would be
shattered by the bustle along the tramway. But when we got there, nothing, not even a single
passing car. Every window was dark. The hazy moon seemed to gather the silence up around
it like a net. Not a sound: no sirens, no rats in the bins that lined the street. My grandfather
stopped, looked up and down the street, then turned left.

‘It’s not far now,’ he said.

I caught up with him long enough to see that he was smiling. ‘Not far to where?’ I said, out of
breath, angry. I drew myself up and stopped. ‘I’m not going any further until you tell me.’

He turned to look at me, indignant. ‘Lower your voice you fool,’ he hissed. Suddenly his arms
went over his head in a wide arc. ‘Can’t you feel it? No one in the world awake but us.’ And off
he went again.
We passed empty windows of shops that had gone out of business; lightless buildings; a
beggar sleeping so soundly that I would have thought him dead if I hadn’t realised that the
moment had closed around us, making everything still.

Suddenly grandfather stopped ahead of me and stood, pointing into the distance, his hand
shaking with excitement.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Look!’

I peered out into the street. On the other side, there was a street lamp with a dying bulb. I was
opening my mouth to say ‘What?’ and then I saw it. Half a block from us, an enormous shadow
was moving along the street.

At first I thought it was a tram, but its shape was too organic, too lumpy, and it was going far
too slowly for that, making almost no noise. It was swaying, swaying up the street with an even
momentum in a rolling motion that was drawing it away from us like a tide, and every time it
rocked forward, something about it made a soft dragging sound on the rails. As we watched,
the thing sucked in air and then let out a deep groan.

‘That’s an elephant!’ I said.

My grandfather said nothing. His glasses had fogged up during the walk, but he wasn’t taking
them off to wipe them. He took my hand; we watched the animal.

Its ears were folded back against the domed, bouldered head with big-lidded eyes; the arched
roll of the spine fell away into the hips; dry folds of skin shook around the shoulders and knees
as it shifted its weight. It seemed to take up the whole street. It dragged its curled trunk like a
fist along the ground.

Several metres in front of it, holding a bag of something that must have been enormously
tempting, a short young man was walking slowly backward, drawing it forward with whispers.

‘I saw them at the train station as I was coming home,’ my grandfather said.

The elephant passed: slow, graceful, enchanted by the food in the young man’s hand.

‘No one will ever believe this,’ I said.

My grandfather looked at me like he’d never seen me before. ‘You must be joking,’ he said.

‘Look around. Think for a moment – do you think anybody would understand? Do you think it
will matter to them?’

Later that year, we would read about how some soldiers had found an elephant near death at
the site of an abandoned circus; about how, despite everything, despite closure and
bankruptcy, the zoo director had said, ‘Bring him in – eventually the kids will see him.’ The
newspapers ran a picture of him, standing stark-ribbed in his new pen at the zoo, an advert of
better times to come, hope for the future and the end of the war.
Question 1

(a) Identify a word or phrase from the text which suggests the same idea as the words underlined:

(i) Natalia was expecting the quietness of their walk to be broken suddenly.

Shattered

(ii) Natalia slowed herself down and made herself as tall as possible before refusing to go any
further.

Drew myself up

(iii) Her grandfather spoke to her in a low, angry voice.

Hissed

(iv) The homeless person was fast asleep.

Sleeping and Soundly

(b) Using your own words, explain what the writer means by each of the words underlined:

I peered out into the street. On the other side, there was a street lamp with a dying bulb. I was
opening my mouth to say ‘What?’ and then I saw it. Half a block from us, an enormous shadow
was moving along the street.

(i) peered Try to see

(ii) dying Fading

(iii) enormous Huge

(c) Use one example from the text below to explain how the writer suggests Natalia’s
experiences and feelings that night.

Use your own words in your explanation.

I peered out into the street. On the other side, there was a street lamp with a dying bulb. I was
opening my mouth to say ‘What?’ and then I saw it. Half a block from us, an enormous shadow
was moving along the street.

“Peered out”, suggest to the reader the difficulty in seeing clearly what is ahead. “Dying bulb”,
 suggest to the audience that is getting darker; “I was opening… and then”, describes whe
something or someone is in the middle of an action; “then I saw it”, is giving evidence;
“enormous shadow”, try to tell that she was surprised by the cheer size; and “moving along the
street”, have the sense of threat and tension building in the scenario.

(d) Re-read paragraphs 9 and 12.

• Paragraph 9 begins ‘At first I thought it was a tram …’ and is about the elephant and how it
was moving when Natalia first saw it.
• Paragraph 12 begins ‘Its ears were folded back …’ and gives Natalia’s impression of the
elephant as she watches it come towards her.

Explain how the writer uses language to convey meaning and to create effect in these
paragraphs. Choose three examples of words or phrases from each paragraph to support your
answer. Your choices should include the use of imagery.

Write about 200 to 300 words.

Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer.

In first place the writer have an effect in the reader when it talks about “too organic, too lumpy”,
it is difficult to the reader to see a concret image on its head because is difficult to recognice is it
is a natural shape or a living thing. It is important when the writer talkedabout “far too slowly”,
because it is measured, it is a pace that if we suggest the progress would be difficult. When the
writer gives us the idea of “almost no noice” is talking about the smallest of the sound/ of
sounds. It means that is walking side to side when the writer wrote “swaying, swaying”.
“Rocked”, is to (cause someone or something to) move backwards and forwards or
from side to side in a regular way.

When we see the expression “ears folded back” it means as if packed away eventually.
“Domed”, suggest religious connections to the audience or even shaped like a hemispherical
form. “Big-lidded eyes” suggest drooping eyes. “Bouldered head”, means something huge or A
work against the encroachment of the sea, made of wooden stakes. For ending an “Arched
roll the spine”, means in a rounded form but more curved than usual like an arch, just like the
sense of maybe a huge skeleton.